


Quadruple Drabble: On The Importance Of Names.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: fic_promptly, Erasure of women, Podfic Available, Quadruple Drabble, Referring to women by their relationship to a man, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-25
Updated: 2011-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:13:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Barrayar, women don't have names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quadruple Drabble: On The Importance Of Names.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://silverblade219.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**silverblade219**](http://silverblade219.dreamwidth.org/) 's prompt on [](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fic_promptly**](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/) : _Vorkosigan, any, too many women in Barrayaran history remain nameless_.
> 
> This is probably more rant than fic.
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> Podfic by [](http://via-ostiense.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**via_ostiense**](http://via-ostiense.dreamwidth.org/) is [available here](http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/350302.html) and [here](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/quadruple-drabble-on-importance-of-names). :D

Cordelia expects certain things from a backward patriarchal society, but even after warning herself repeatedly and preparing herself up for the disappointment, she's still surprised by the extent to which women can't have names of their own.

She accepts her new title, _Lady Vorkosigan_ , as less-than-problematic, but then she finds out that to call herself _Lady Cordelia_ would be incorrect. Lady isn't her title, she doesn't own it. Lady Vorkosigan means only that she's married to Lord Vorkosigan. Lady Cordelia would be his daughter, who only gets her own name in society while she's not married, and she only keeps it after she's married if she manages to do it to someone unimportant. Which is unlikely for a Vorkosigan.

The proles don't even have _that_. Cordelia is introduced to Aral's cook, a woman who Aral has known for years, and when she refers to her later as _Polina_ , Aral asks, "who?" Ma Jankowski, Cordelia breaks it apart, means the woman who is married to Jankowski and is the one who bears his children from her body. Her own name is unimportant.

Cordelia tours graveyards, wondering if, even then, a woman gets her own name back. Aral's first wife's grave is unmarked in the Vorkosigan family cemetery. It wasn't until Cordelia asked where his first wife was buried that she found out that she had walked right by it when she had first come to Vorkosigan Surleau.

"It was marked as Lady Vorkosigan," Aral says, sounding surprised to find out Cordelia's so angry about it, "but my father objected, said she didn't deserve to be buried as a Vorkosigan."

Prince Xav's wife, who Cordelia remembers from her history of intergalactic trade textbooks as being a well-respected professor on the subject and who developed some interesting theories, is known by just that in common parlance: as the woman who married Xav. Her grave is next to his and says: _Princess J. Vorbarra_. It's more than Aral's mother has, whose stone says _Princess-and-Countess Vorkosigan_. Apparently, that's all that's required to identify her individually compared to all the other women-who-married-a-Count-Vorkosigan.

Aral's sister gets a stone with her name and her titles, the same as her older brother. Do Barrayarans stop caring about girls after they get married, or is it just that they stop thinking that they're individual people once they've been properly dowered off?

Cordelia decides: they won't bury _her_ on this planet.


End file.
